Re: [ft] cannot open some fonts on mac and linux

[David Turner]

Hi mpsuzuki,

the traditional, and painful, way to deal with this sort of problems
in a seamless way (at least for the user) is to use dlopen()-style dynamic
linking to access the "missing" Carbon functions.

what this means is that:

- the libfreetype.lib would not explicitely link to Carbon, and
  thus could always be linked to non-Carbon programs

- the libfreetype.lib contains code that uses dlopen() or whatever
  Darwin provides to determine if Carbon functions are available in the
  currently running program. If so, it would enable Carbon-related
  features automatically (by essentially doing a dlsym() of all 
  required Carbon functions, storing the result in pointers, and
  calling them through these pointers)

of course, all the linking must be done explicitely in the code.
usually, a lot of this glue code is generated by a script.

do you think it'd be possible to add this to FreeType, to get rid of the
--with-old-mac-fonts and related issues ?

I know it's non trivial work, but that would be the right thing to do.

- David
 

On Thu, 20 Sep 2007 23:27:32 +0900, address@hidden said:
> Hi,
> 
> On Thu, 20 Sep 2007 14:57:50 +0200
> Riccardo Cohen <address@hidden> wrote:
> >I ran ftdump with this flag and the font was open correctly. my program 
> >could now read all suitcase.
> 
> Good. I guess 2 dfonts (Keyboard.dfont and LastResort.dfont)
> cannot be loaded, because they are designed for special purpose
> (see freetype2-x.y.z/src/gxvalid/README), but others are
> loadable. If you find any unloadable fonts, please let me
> know.
> 
> >But does this mean that I will have problem and conflicts between 
> >quickdraw and freetype ? Is there any documentation about the troubles 
> >you spoke about ?
> 
> One of the popular trouble is... let me tell a lengthy story.
> 
> There are people who build Unix free softwares for MacOS
> and distribute their prebuilt binaries. Some of them use
> the development environment including libfreetype.dylib
> (MacOS shared library) built without Carbon framework,
> because they want to do as they do on other standard POSIX
> systems without proprietary Carbon framework.
> 
> When their binaries are executed, dynamic linker doesn't
> search Carbon framework at all, because the developers
> don't use Carbon framework when the developers link the
> program.
> 
> If I insert Carbon-dependent libfreetype.dylib into the
> runtime libraries, how the binary is loaded?
> My libfreetype.dylib wants the dynamic linker to resolve
> QuickDraw functions in Carbon framework when the binary
> is loaded. But the dynamic linker doesn't search Carbon
> framework, because the program was not linked with Carbon
> framework. As a result, all Carbon functions in my
> libfreetype.dylib is claimed as unresolvable, and the
> program cannot be executed. There are several ugly hack
> to cover such unresolvable function issues, but no general
> solution working for all Mac OS X.
> 
> If you install 2 different libfreetype.dylib on your
> system and tune DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH carefully for each
> programs, this trouble can be avoided, but it won't be
> pragmatic.
> 
> --
> 
> The most beautiful solution is Carbon-free suitcase font
> support. Masatake Yamato had already implemented initial 
> codes, and the enhancement and completion of it is my task,
> but it's not finished yet. Sorry again for your inconvenience.
> 
> Regards,
> mpsuzuki
> 
> >address@hidden wrote:
> >> Hi,
> >> 
> >> I'm current maitainer of MacOS specific part of
> >> FreeType2, sorry for your inconvenience.
> >> 
> >> On Thu, 20 Sep 2007 12:25:01 +0200
> >> Riccardo Cohen <address@hidden> wrote:
> >>> MAC
> >>> ---
> >>> some basic fonts (/Library/Fonts/Arial) are not open, and I have about 
> >>> 50% of font files that fail to open with FT_New_Face(). It seems that it 
> >>> is all mac font suitcases... which are used by all native softwares.
> >> 
> >> Recent FreeType2 does not enable the support code
> >> for suitcase font format (to avoid binary incompatibility
> >> troubles by unexpected QuickDraw framework).
> >> Please try "configure --with-old-mac-fonts".
> >> 
> >> Regards,
> >> mpsuzuki
> >> 
> >
> >-- 
> >
> >Riccardo Cohen
> >ligne directe : 02-47-49-63-24
> >-------------------------------------------
> >Articque
> >http://www.articque.com
> >37230 Fondettes - France
> >tel : 02-47-49-90-49
> >fax : 02-47-49-91-49
> >
> >
> >_______________________________________________
> >Freetype mailing list
> >address@hidden
> >http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/freetype
> 
> 
> -- 
> &#37428;&#26408;
> 
> 
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